France vs England - now big in Japan

By: Andy Morton - 28 June 2012 17:03

Shelf wars

Just the other week they battled to a 1-1 draw in the football, but it seems France and England are continuing their centuries-long grudge match on the soda shelves of Japan.

Our exclusive picture, snapped in a Japanese convenience store this week, shows Schweppes and Orangina fighting it out shoulder to shoulder just one week after the 97th anniversary of the battle of Waterloo.

It's one for the ages, this. After all, what's more English than good-old Schweppes, now owned by US-based Dr Pepper Snapple Group. Or as French as Orangina, where the concept for the drink originated, but now owned in Japan by Suntory and in North America by, er... Dr Pepper Snapple Group.

It seems in this incarnation of the Anglo-Gallic feud, it's the Americans (and the Japanese) that win.